15. Finance Director Fan Club (Not Really)
15. Finance Director Fan Club (Not Really)
'Was that really the right thing to say? Shouldn't I apologize to Master while I still can?'
'And give up Adam?'
'That's... not what I want either.'
In a corner of the bustling ballroom, Chloe sat slumped, emptying one glass after another and doing nothing but sighing.
Her master, whom she hadn't seen in ages. A ball, rarer still. She'd worn her best dress on the off chance the Finance Director showed up, and done her makeup to perfection. The Finance Director hadn't so much as poked his nose in, and she'd ended up clashing with her master instead. Ever since, she'd been drinking alone, rebuffing every male student who approached her with cold finality.
'Master seems to have vanished from the ballroom too... Did he go looking for that princess bitch?'
'Who knows. Even at my level, I can't pinpoint a family-sexual's location. So, what now?'
'That's rich, coming from you. You were right there chiming in the whole time.'
'Still, you're the one who played the ultimate card—giving up your family name.'
'...That's true.'
Future Chloe was right. She'd always thought of her master as eccentric, but tonight had made one thing clear: Chloe could no longer interact with him the way she used to. Though "the way she used to" barely meant anything—she could count on one hand the number of times she'd properly faced him. But he was still her master.
Chloe's last ten years had been nothing but effort and training to become the Elf Archmage's disciple. The name Pisti, earned through all of that—and now she had to cast it aside. It stung. But accepting her master's words was out of the question.
'Love within the family. That's just... wrong.'
'Even without that, I'd still have to break up with Adam.'
'W-well, what if Adam became a Pisti too...?'
'Would he, though?'
'...No.'
She personally held goodwill toward the Finance Director, but him becoming a Pisti was a separate matter. His individual competence aside, he had absolutely zero magical talent.
In the end, she had to choose one. Her master, or the Finance Director.
Her future self must have faced this same choice.
'I already know what you picked.'
'Right back at you.'
Maybe it was the slight buzz. The choice came more impulsively than expected. Though the outcome had probably been decided all along.
She had simply steeled herself to be called Chloe now—not Chloe Pisti.
'But if I'm not Master's disciple anymore... what am I?'
'...That's a path you'll have to find for yourself.'
'And you found it at Adam's side.'
'................'
'I can make the same choice as you... right?'
Her future self had abandoned her position as a disciple of the Magic Tower and stood beside the Finance Director. It was a repudiation of ten years of effort—and at the same time, a choice for the future to come.
The Chloe of the present could understand that choice completely. Love was passionate, the most desperate of emotions, and sometimes it outpaced any rational judgment.
Someday that love, that feeling, might cool. But one thing Chloe had been able to confirm through a stroke of luck.
'Hey, future me.'
'What, all of a sudden?'
'Do you still love Adam?'
'...You really need to ask?'
'No. That's all I needed to know.'
She now knew that this feeling wouldn't change—at least until she graduated from the academy and reached the peak of 7th Rank. Armed with that knowledge, Chloe—a truly troublesome woman—could finally accept her own choice.
'Come to think of it, Chloe Caines doesn't sound half bad, does it? Though I've never heard of the Caines family—is Adam from fallen nobility?'
'I don't know either. But I agree it doesn't sound bad.'
'He still doesn't seem to see me as a prospect, but honestly, if I set my mind to it, it won't take long.'
'This is where you're nothing like me.'
'Well, you'd probably drag it out, all flustered.'
'Shut it.'
Having reached her own conclusion, Chloe continued drinking and chatting with her future self. She glanced around: still no Adam in the ballroom, Beatrice vanished to who-knew-where, Rus being irritating as ever, Risha and Kaern squabbling about something.
Then her gaze landed on the center of the ballroom, where the crowd was thickest—where the Chairwoman stood.
'Pathetic.'
'So pathetic.'
The two Chloes simultaneously muttered the same word to themselves just as they always did when badmouthing the Chairwoman.
Then came a sudden murmur. The ballroom had never been quiet, but this was a different kind of noise.
"His Highness the Crown Prince...!!"
"He's been keeping quiet all this time, and now—?"
"What is the royal family's position? Surely they don't still intend to keep the academy in check even after a terrorist attack?"
'The First Prince...?'
'Hm.'
At the head of a retinue of attendants and ministers stood the First Prince, with his cropped golden hair and cool, composed smile. The man who had overtaken the Second Prince as the most likely candidate to inherit the throne had come in person.
Why had the First Prince, who'd deliberately kept silent until now, finally made his move? Chloe's curiosity flickered briefly before she dismissed it. It wasn't anything she needed to know. And given the atmosphere, the nobles would keep yapping about it whether she wanted to hear it or not.
The First Prince approached the Chairwoman and stopped before her.
"Chairwoman, it has been far too long. His Majesty sends his regards."
"So Aken sent you in his place. Last time I saw you, you were a baby—I suppose that does make it a long time."
"Along with my heartfelt condolences regarding the recent attack, I am here to convey the royal family's intentions."
"Intentions...?"
"As already communicated by letter, the royal family intends to provide donations and subsidies for the academy's reconstruction. You may be the wealthiest person in the kingdom, Chairwoman, but money is always better when there's more of it, is it not?"
"That's true enough. Is that all?"
"Of course. You are the shield that has always protected this kingdom, Chairwoman. What could we possibly ask of you?"
Even Chloe, a foreigner, could read between those lines. That alone was enough to grasp just how much the royal family kept the Chairwoman in check. The surrounding nobles remained silent, and the Chairwoman herself stood with her arms folded, radiating pure skepticism.
But the First Prince's beaming smile didn't waver in the slightest.
"However, there is one very trivial favor I would ask."
"This is Aken's doing, isn't it?"
"Of course, His Majesty shares this view. But please, do not worry."
"Hm."
"As I said, it truly is trivial."
─────.
What the First Prince said next was so trivial it made the earlier foreshadowing feel like a joke. In some ways, it was almost predictable.
The surrounding nobles and merchant guild representatives all nodded along. Chloe, eavesdropping from her corner, found herself thinking, That really is a trivial request.
Only one person reacted differently.
"Er... um."
The Chairwoman looked profoundly, unmistakably uncomfortable.
*
Power.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't want it. In this world, power wasn't just a nice-to-have—it was social standing, it was proof of worth.
Say I quit my post as Finance Director right now. Could I find another job with this experience? It's not impossible, but landing a position of comparable importance at an organization of this scale would be out of the question. Because I'm too weak.
'If a subordinate at another organization decided to rob me blind, there'd be nothing I could do about it. Getting kidnapped or worse would just be icing on the cake.'
You could argue that the same applies to everyone. Roughly a third of the continent is 1st Rank—isn't it just unavoidable? But precisely because of that, people who possess neither power nor status could never rise to the upper echelons. There were plenty of success stories about 1st Ranks elevated to high positions on merit alone. But there were also plenty of cases where they were killed by a stronger subordinate.
The personnel indispensable to running an organization—or a nation—aren't that numerous. When you've got 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Ranks to pick from, the only organizations that deliberately hire a 1st Rank are those desperate for people, or those perfectly fine with the hire dropping dead on short notice.
'Which is why there was so much pushback when I became Finance Director.'
The academy's Finance Department had barely qualified as having subordinates—its sole member was me—and a terrifyingly powerful transcendent spent nearly twenty-four hours a day at my side watching my back. Even then, the whispers about me, the 1st Rank, never stopped. Students openly worried about my Rank or treated me like dead weight. Even back in my academy days, 1st Ranks started at a physical disadvantage, didn't they?
There are too many liabilities when a 1st Rank holds a high position. A disloyal underling could kill you. You offer zero deterrence in an emergency. You can be kidnapped and tortured. You have no resistance to mental magic whatsoever.
A lack of power, being 1st Rank—it isn't just social discrimination. It's a physical hazard.
So if I said the Elf Archmage's offer hadn't tempted me... I would be lying.
'What should I do.'
The Archmage had left. He'd said he would remain at the grounds until the ball ended, and if I wanted to, I could give him my answer inside it. Accept the Eye, he'd said.
'This is an 8th Rank Archmage. It's unlikely to be a lie.'
I couldn't claim to see through the Archmage's thoughts, but earlier he had undeniably felt gratitude toward me. And given his temperament, he struck me as the type to speak bluntly when something was on his mind, not someone who talked in circles or held grudges.
If I accepted, I really might be able to escape 1st Rank. He was an Archmage who studied the Eye, after all. It wouldn't be a normal Rank, obviously, but I'd gain a sliver of genuine power.
"...Tch."
Of course I wanted it. What had I gone through, living as a 1st Rank? I'd always been endlessly frustrated. I'd just forced myself to accept the reality that I was utterly, thoroughly talentless.
If I could break out of 1st Rank, I might finally do something about this bone-deep exhaustion. Even the Chairwoman, who works far more than I do, is bursting with energy. I obviously wouldn't reach that level, but at least I wouldn't need military-grade stimulants just to function.
And that wasn't all. I could leave the academy without an escort and handle field assignments. The staff around me would finally acknowledge me. My position as Finance Director would become that much more secure. In every respect, accepting this offer had nothing but upsides.
And yet I was hesitating. Why?
'What would the Chairwoman say if she found out.'
It came down to my boss. Because her reaction was all too predictable.
She probably wouldn't tolerate me accepting the Eye. And beyond her resistance, I also felt a little sorry toward her. From a certain angle, it could look like I didn't trust her protection—like I was seriously considering the Archmage's proposal because I doubted her.
I could persuade her. I was confident I could make her understand. But even after accepting the Eye... could I still maintain a smooth relationship with her? Wouldn't she start to regard me with suspicion? Because, to be blunt, the Archmage might try to control me through the Eye I accepted.
'Refusing is the right call. It's right, but...'
Still. What a waste.
During the entrance exam. During the dwarf negotiations. During the Professor Kirke incident. During the uninhabited-island midterm. During the festival. And a dozen times since. How many times had I thought—if only I had power, so many things would have gone so much more smoothly.
"............."
How long had I been lost in thought? Beyond the dark office, past the brilliantly lit ballroom, dawn was breaking.
No urgent messages had come through in the meantime, so the Chairwoman must have handled everything without incident.
What came next was obvious. Take the donations, along with the money extracted from Crown Prince Zeke and the Archmage, and keep the academy running. Same as always, but a little more breathing room this time.
Would I regret this later—turning down what might be the last chance of my life? Would I end up despairing, thinking I should've taken it?
...Maybe it was the early hour, but I seemed to be sinking into a strange mood.
'No.'
As the academy's Finance Director, I won't do anything that harms this place. We've already been through a terrorist attack and a dozen other things, apparently, but regardless. If I accept the Eye, who knows what aftereffects it might bring. At worst, I could become the Archmage's puppet. That insane elf feels gratitude toward me now, but there's no telling how his feelings might change later.
Refuse. Refusing is the right call.
Shaking off the lingering regret and greed lodged in the corner of my heart—
With the dawn, maybe this time I could finally rest a little——
[Fi-Finance Director.]
"Ah, Chairwoman. Is the ball over?"
[It ended well enough. It ended, but...]
"Was there some problem with the donations?"
[Th-that's not it.]
"Then it's fine. And Chairwoman."
[Yes?]
"Thank you for all your hard work. Truly."
[.............]
So our academy is finally accepting donations. The abnormal thing was that we weren't taking them before. We're only getting normalized now.
Of course, there are reasons we avoided donations, so we'll have to be careful in a lot of ways. We'll need to watch that the donations don't give graduates, merchant guilds, and the royal family too much influence over the academy. And it's important to make sure this isn't a one-time surge of post-terror donations, but something that continues long-term.
But more than any of that—I wanted to tell the Chairwoman, who had stubbornly stuck it out with me to this point, that she'd done well.
'Back during the entrance ceremony, the problem was whether we'd even survive a month.'
Now we had substantial temporary income, and donations would be coming in.
To say we'd escaped the immediate bankruptcy crisis would be
absolute bullshit.
'The real work starts now.'
Money is always more dangerous when you have an ambiguous amount of it than when you have none. And above all, "that time" was slowly approaching.
Cut what can be cut, and minimize every expense.
The goal isn't just to survive the present crisis—it's to build a financially stable structure for the long term——
[Um... Finance Director.]
"Yes, Chairwoman."
[We've received all the donations... including from the royal family...]
"Then what is the issue?"
[Well, you see.]
"Please speak plainly. I have something I need to discuss with you as well."
What was this nervous energy? We got the donations. What else was there? The royal family was keeping its head down because of the Delphia Kingdom situation, and the other nobles, merchant guilds, and alumni wouldn't be able to exert significant influence—right?
More importantly, I needed to discuss the Archmage's proposal with the Chairwoman. I was going to refuse anyway, but she needed to know.
To my question, the Chairwoman answered very briefly.
[They're... launching an audit.]
"Pardon?"
[The other nobles and guilds have all agreed... in exchange for the donations and subsidies, the royal family will serve as the representative to audit our finances...]
"............."
[Fi-Finance Director? Finance Director?]
Ah.
Fucking hell.